Nicholas Christakis

So I think that humans, of course, behave worse when they're anonymous or pseudonymous.

And now I have a hard time arguing.

My problem is that I think that any entity where you can't be anonymous behavior is going to be better.

On the other hand, I don't necessarily want to abolish anonymity either, because I think that's a tool for totalitarianism.

So I think there will be social media companies which

require or where people who use them, which afford people the opportunity to be non-anonymous and which people then privilege non-anonymous accounts, which I think will help.

So I think tools to afford people the option and also to exploit non-anonymity will help.

Yeah.

Another thing you said, 230, like I struggle with this as well, because on the one hand, I do think that 230 was crucial, actually, for the emergence of the Internet.

I do think that there is an argument to be made that these social media companies are just carriers and shouldn't be responsible for their content.

On the other hand, I also think, you know, washing their hands of the content entirely doesn't make much sense either.

It allows them to sort of wink, wink and just ignore content.

horrible abuses taking place on their platform.

So I actually don't have an answer to that struggle either.

But what I do think is going to happen, just as you said, is I think people, and maybe this will be accelerated by AI and AI slot, I think people will learn.

And I think, ironically, we may have a kind of return to a privileging of reputable sources, like

you know, we've migrated so far away from, you know, the evening news with Dan Rather kind of, you know, thing to everyone is an expert and, you know, there's all this kind of good stuff, but also crap online.

I think we may, ironically, people may be willing to pay a bit more for reliability.

You may not believe it unless you read it in The Economist, you know, then you'll believe it.

You're not going to believe whatever you see otherwise online.